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hospital
'Rule-of-Law Western Style': Israeli Assassination Squad Kills Three in Jenin Hospital
Ibn Sina hospital's medical director said the Palestinian men were "executed in cold blood."
Jan 30, 2024
A team of Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff raided Ibn Sina hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and assassinated three Palestinians, claiming without providing evidence that they were using the facility as a hideout and planning an attack inspired by the Hamas-led October 7 assault.
Journalists on the ground report that there was no apparent attempt to arrest the three individuals, whom the Israeli military identified as Mohammed Jalamneh, Mohammed Ghazawi, and his brother Basel Ghazawi. Ibn Sina's medical director said the three men were "executed in cold blood."
Al Jazeera reported that "Hamas confirmed that Jalamneh was one of its members."
"The Jenin Brigade, which includes a number of Palestinian armed resistance groups, said in a statement that two of the three men were members of Islamic Jihad," the outlet added.
A hospital spokesperson told The Associated Press that 18-year-old Basel Ghazawi "had been a patient in the hospital since October with partial paralysis."
Security footage from the hospital shows Israeli forces dressed as civilian women and medical workers moving through a facility hallway and waiting area with assault rifles drawn.
#شاهد
لحظة اقتحام قوة خاصة من جيش الاحتلال تتنكر بلباس الطواقم الطبية مستشفى ابن سينا في #جنين واغتيال الشهداء محمد جلامنة وباسل ومحمد الغزاوي pic.twitter.com/6TwHEPb9NI
— Newpress | نيو برس (@NewpressPs) January 30, 2024
Citing Palestinian officials, AP reported that the Israeli forces "opened fire inside the wards" of the hospital, located in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Palestinian health officials "condemned the raid and called on the international community to pressure Israel's military to halt such operations in hospitals," AP added. "A hospital spokesperson said there was no exchange of fire, indicating that it was a targeted killing."
Hospitals have special protections under international law, but Israel has treated them as legitimate targets for military operations since October 7, endangering wounded patients and medical personnel by raiding and shelling the facilities at will.
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, sardonically described the Israeli forces' Jenin hospital raid as "rule-of-law Western style" and rejected the notion that "you can kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying, brand him/her terrorist, and then vilify as antisemites the ancestors of everyone who questions your right to kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying."
Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford, reporting from Ramallah, said Tuesday that "the Israeli army often surrounds and in some instances has attacked the three Palestinian hospitals in Jenin during nightly raids on the city."
"But this is the first time they have entered a civilian medical facility in what seems to have been a well-planned, targeted assassination operation that Palestinian authorities are calling another violation of international law," said Stratford.
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Investigators Ready to Go, But Will US Consent to Hospital Bombing Probe?
'We need to know if the rules of war have changed,' says MSF
Oct 14, 2015
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Wednesday are waiting for a response from the U.S. and Afghanistan to approve a formal investigation into the bombing of its charity hospital earlier this month.
MSF announced that a formal request had been made to the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) to investigate the U.S. military airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, marking the first time the Commission has been activated since its inception in 1991 under the Geneva Conventions.
"The IHFFC stands ready to undertake an investigation but can only do so based on the consent of the concerned State or States," the commission wrote in a statement Wednesday.
It is unclear if the U.S. or Afghanistan will permit the investigation. MSF has consistently said it cannot rely on internal investigations by the U.S. Department of Defense, Afghan officials, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which are currently underway and previously called on both governments to allow for an independent probe of the October 3 bombing that killed 22 people, including patients and staff.
President Obama formally apologized to the medical charity, and the Pentagon has said it plans to give "condolence payments" to victims' families. Still, MSF international president Dr. Joanne Liu has maintained that the organization's biggest priority is an impartial inquiry into the airstrike.
"We have received apologies and condolences, but this is not enough. We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for over an hour," Liu said Wednesday. "We need to understand what happened and why."
"We need to know if the rules of war have changed, not just for Kunduz, but for the safety of our teams working in frontline hospitals all over the world," Liu said.
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Pentagon Readies Payouts for Hospital Bombing, But Still Refuses Independent Probe
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has not responded directly, but on Monday reiterated its call for an independent investigation
Oct 12, 2015
While ignoring repeated calls for an independent inquiry, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would make "condolence payments" to the families of victims of a U.S. airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, earlier this month, which killed 22 people.
The Pentagon made its announcement Saturday after two weeks of scrambling to solidify its narrative on the bombing. MSF has labeled the attack a war crime and consistently stated that the airstrike deliberately targeted the hospital, even after the medical charity circulated its coordinates to fighters on both sides.
As the New York Times explained in an article published Sunday, condolence payments are "a way for the United States, without admitting any wrongdoing, to compensate civilians who have been injured, lost a loved one or suffered property damage at the hands of the military."
Though the Pentagon refuses to make available a catalog or record of how often it makes such payments, the Times used public records and media reports to provide a few examples from recent years.
"The Department of Defense believes it is important to address the consequences of the tragic incident at the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan," said Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook. He added that the department would also pay to fix the hospital, although MSF staff withdrew from Kunduz following the bombing.
MSF has not directly responded to the Pentagon's announcement. However, on Monday, the medical charity released a "photo story" of its hospital under attack, which included a series of images from MSF staff around the world holding up messages calling for an independent investigation into the bombing.
Currently, three probes are underway by the U.S. military, Afghan officials, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
However, following the attack, Doctors Without Borders international president Dr. Joanne Liu said that "given the inconsistencies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts.... We cannot rely on only internal military investigations by the U.S., NATO, and Afghan forces."
President Barack Obama called MSF officials last week to apologize personally for the airstrike, a rare move by a commander-in-chief. However, MSF rebuffed his statement and called again for the U.S. to consent to an investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC).
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Not Satisfied With Obama Apology, MSF Repeats Demand for Independent Probe
Head of aid organizations says only acceptable response is US endorsement of an independent, global investigation into what happened in Kunduz
Oct 08, 2015
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) officials signaled on Wednesday that they are not satisfied with President Barack Obama's apology for his military's deadly bombing of their hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, and reiterated their demand for the U.S. to "consent" to a global, independent investigation.
In a sharply-worded statement, MSF International president Dr. Joanne Liu said, "We received President Obama's apology today for the attack against our trauma hospital in Afghanistan."
"However," Liu continued, "we reiterate our ask that the U.S. government consent to an independent investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission [IHFFC] to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened."
"Whatever apology or excuse Obama has prepared he can save it because, at the end of the day, what counts here is accountability."
--Suraia Sahar, Afghans United for Justice
Obama's rare phone call from the Oval Office came five days after the deadly attack and followed reluctance from the White House to issue a formal apology. It followed at least four changes in the U.S. military's official story about how and why its forces carried out the bombing that killed 22 people--three of them children--and wounded 37.
According to a statement from the White House, the president "assured Dr. Liu of his expectation that the Department of Defense investigation currently underway would provide a transparent, thorough, and objective accounting of the facts and circumstances of the incident and pledged full cooperation with the joint investigations being conducted with NATO and the Afghan Government."
However, the pledge falls far short of what MSF is asking for: an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, created in 1991 under the Geneva Conventions. The humanitarian organization declared, "The IHFFC is set up for precisely this purpose: to independently investigate humanitarian law violations, such as attacks on hospitals, which are protected in conflict zones. "
In a less publicized development on Wednesday, the president also called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to express "his condolences for the Afghan civilians killed and injured" in the attack on the MSF hospital.
However, the U.S. bombing of the MSF-run hospital was by no means unique. As Jon Schwarz pointed out at The Intercept on Wednesday, the United States has a long history of bombing civilian facilities and infrastructure, from the Al Jazeera office in Kabul, Afghanistan (November 13, 2001) to the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq (April 8, 2003).
"Whatever apology or excuse Obama has prepared, he can save it because, at the end of the day, what counts here is accountability," Suraia Sahar, an organizer with Afghans United for Justice, told Common Dreams. MSF's status as a well-known foreign organization is "the only reason this even got attention," Sahar said.
"If we were to collect the number of times they killed Afghans," she added, "Obama should have given countless apologies."
Meanwhile, General John Campbell, who oversees U.S. troops in Afghanistan, is using the bombing to bolster his argument to prolong the war in Afghanistan, which entered its 15th year on Wednesday.
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What's Missing in Our Profit-Driven Healthcare System? Quality Human Care
Why you should be wary of “FRANK”
May 20, 2014
National Nurses United: Nurses vs.Computer Care Ad (HD)See more ads and learn more at: https://www.InsistOnAnRN.org Nurses Vs. Computer Care - Healthcare is changing. And not for ...
Noticed how little in the healthcare debate we hear one word that should be at its center - care?
Nurses have noticed, and are alarmed at worrisome changes now putting patients at risk.
A new video from National Nurses United starring the decidedly non-personal "FRANK" is a humorous or not so humorous glimpse into one of the most troubling mutations.
Largely away from the media focus on websites and insurance markets, hospitals, with a helping hand from insurers and other corporate interests, are, dramatically altering your ability to get the care you need.
They're even re-defining what it means to be sick.
For those reasons and more, NNU has launched a public advocacy campaign as an alert about sweeping changes in the healthcare delivery system that are occurring far outside the media spotlight, but frighteningly real to nurses and many patients alike.
To highlight these startling mutations, NNU is sponsoring radio ads, videos, legislation, and holding rallies, marches and other street actions across the country to warn patients and communities what they may face the next time they are at their most vulnerable.
One of the biggest dangerous developments is the proliferation of unproven medical technology.
"FRANK" and company shine a light on computer care at the bedside with only a modicum of hyperbole.
You may think "Frank," as in "Formatted Recognition Analysis, Non-Human Konclusion," bears little resemblance to reality.
But every day RNs see "clinical decision" type systems on which hospital executives are spending hundreds of millions of dollars that spit out an instant diagnosis, prognosis and treatment protocol that may bear little correspondence to your actual condition and treatment need.
Increasingly, the computers rely on a concept known as "population health," in which the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment recommendations are based on factors common to a broad swatch of similar people.
When the patient in our "Personalized Care" ad asks for a registered nurse - not the computer and its algorithms - the hospital executive blandly explains the algorithms "tell us what disease you should have based on what other patients have had."
"That makes no sense. I'm not other patients. I'm me!" our patient says crying out for help.
"Look it's not all about You!" the executive retorts. "We've spent millions on algorithms, software, computers."
So, you're only as sick, as someone else with a similar symptom, regardless of what other health problems you may have. And your outlook for recovery, and what care, if any, you receive, is increasingly determined by others that fit your "profile," not your own health status.
Thus the crux of this trend with individualized care fading away as hospitals spend instead on experimental medical technology.
Much of the medical technology is being promoted as the cure all for everything that ails our broken healthcare system from medical errors to how to cut healthcare costs.
Too often technology fails on all those counts. Unsafe staffing is a far more common cause of medical errors, and, as noted, when hospitals spend millions, even billions system-wide, on unproven technology, they are driving up costs, not cutting them.
Unfortunately, there are substantial federal financial incentives within the 2009 stimulus bill. The federal government has handed out more than $23 billion in incentive payments to hospital implementing Electronic Health Records systems, which are linked to the bedside computers, since 2011, it was reported last week.
It's worth emphasizing that the device manufacturers and other industry lobbyists pushed for the federal handouts, as the Washington Post noted, "in a sophisticated, decade-long campaign to shape public opinion and win over Washington's political machinery."
Our video has a happy ending, when an actual RN, Bonnie Castillo, enters the room and tells the hospital billing director, "FRANK," and "Steve," the "highly cost-effective computer technician" to "Move! Now!," get out of the way and get human help.
Other ads in this campaign talk about the hospital's emphasis on collecting your bill and then working to kick you out the door as quickly as possible, and the essential role of having an RN at the bedside. Check out the whole series here.
The ads are a reminder that "when it matters most, insist on a registered nurse." That's one way to respond to the latest assault wave on care from a depersonalized system that is far more focused on its profits than your care.
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